You know what I am going to say. I love you. What other men may mean when they use that expression, I cannot tell. What I mean is that I am under the influence of some tremendous attraction which I have resisted in vain, and which overmasters me. You could draw me to fire, you could draw me to water, you could draw me to the gallows, you could draw me to any death, you could draw me to anything I have most avoided, you could draw me to any exposure and disgrace. This and the confusion of my thoughts, so that I am fit for nothing, is what I mean by your being the ruin of me.

An evening wind uprose too, and the slighter branches cracked and rattled as they moved, in skeleton dances, to its moaning music.

It is the last straw that breaks the camel's back.

Every failure teaches a man something, if he will learn; and you are too sensible a man not to learn from this failure.

... still his philanthropy was of that gunpowderous sort that the difference between it and animosity was hard to determine.

There's a young man hid with me, in comparison with which young man I am a Angel. That young man hears the words I speak. That young man has a secret way pecooliar to himself, of getting at a boy, and at his heart, and at his liver.

When we have done our very, very best, papa, and that is not enough, then I think the right time must have come for asking help of others.